Asian History: Primary Sources

Examples of Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Primary sources are the evidence of history. They are first-hand accounts or representations of a particular historic event or era created by participants or observers. There are many kinds of primary sources including texts (letters, diaries, government reports, newspaper accounts, novels, autobiographies), images (photographs, paintings, advertisements, posters), artifacts (buildings, clothing, sculpture, coins) and audio/visual (songs, oral history interviews, films).

Here are a selection of collections that provide online access to digitized primary sources: